Kirk Siegler

Kirk Siegler covers the western United States for NPR's national desk, a position he's held since December of 2012.

Based at NPR West's studios in Culver City, California, Siegler's reporting focuses on issues including the far-reaching environmental and economic impacts of the drought in California and the West. He also covers the region's complex – and often bitter – disputes around land use. On this beat, his assignments have brought listeners to the heart of anti-government standoffs in the region, including a rare 2014 interview with recalcitrant Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. Siegler also recently took listeners to the front lines of wildfires while embedded with an all-Native American hot shot crew from Arizona. Siegler also contributes extensively to the network's breaking news coverage. Assignments have taken him from Newtown, Connecticut, to tornado-ravaged Oklahoma, to a pair of labor disputes that threatened to shut down West Coast ports.

In 2015, Siegler was awarded an International Reporting Project fellowship from Johns Hopkins University to report on health and development in Nepal. While en route to the country in April, the worst magnitude earthquake to hit the region in more than 80 years struck. Siegler was one of the first foreign journalists to arrive in Kathmandu and helped lead NPR's coverage of the immediate aftermath of the deadly quake. He also filed in-depth reports focusing on the humanitarian disaster and challenges of bringing relief to some of the Nepal's far flung rural villages.

Prior to joining NPR, Siegler spent seven years reporting from Colorado, where he became a familiar voice to NPR listeners reporting on politics, water and the state's ski industry from Denver for NPR Member Station KUNC. Siegler's work has also won numerous Edward R. Murrow and Associated Press awards in Colorado and Montana, where he landed his first reporting job in 2003 serving as Montana Public Radio's first statehouse bureau chief.

Apart from a brief stint working as a waiter in Sydney, Australia, Siegler has spent most of his adult life living in the West. He grew up near Missoula, Montana, and received a journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is an avid skier and enjoys traveling and visiting his family and friends scattered across the globe.

Nearly two weeks after members of a self-styled militia occupied the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in an apparent protest over how the U.S. government treats cattle ranchers in eastern Oregon, it appears things are no closer to a resolution.

Last year, snowpack across the Sierra Nevada was just 5 percent of average. Up and down the West Coast in fact, the 2014-2015 season was marked by late openings, early closings and some resorts not opening at all.

This year's strong start will be good news for farms and cities down the mountain later, but it's especially promising right now for people like Andy Wirth, the resort's CEO.

He took over in 2011, a record snowfall year, only to be followed by three dry years and then last year, the driest in 1,200 years.